Zhang Yuanchao, Fang Tao, Wang Yue, Guo Xin, Alarefi Abdulqawi, Wang Jian, Jiang Tianzi, Zhang Jiuquan
Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China.
Department of Radiology, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, 400038, China.
Brain Imaging Behav. 2017 Feb;11(1):1-7. doi: 10.1007/s11682-015-9499-9.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive muscular weakness and atrophy. Several morphometric studies have been conducted to investigate the gray matter volume or thickness changes in ALS, whereas the cortical folding pattern remains poorly understood. In the present study, we applied a surface-based local gyrification index (LGI) from high resolution MRI data to quantify the cortical folding in matched samples of 25 ALS patients versus 25 healthy controls. Using resting-state fMRI data, we further conducted seed-based functional connectivity analysis to explore the functional correlate of the cortical folding changes. We found that ALS patients had significantly reduced LGI in right occipital cortex and that abnormality in this region associated with decreased functional connectivity in the bilateral precuneus. This set of findings was speculated to result from disturbed white matter connectivity in ALS. In the patient group, we revealed significant negative correlations between disease duration and the LGIs of a cluster in the left superior frontal gyrus, which may reflect the cognitive deterioration in ALS. In summary, our results suggest that LGI may provide a useful means to assess ALS-related neurodegeneration and to study the pathophysiology of ALS.
肌萎缩侧索硬化症（ALS）是一种致命的神经退行性疾病，其特征为进行性肌肉无力和萎缩。已经开展了多项形态测量研究来调查ALS患者灰质体积或厚度的变化，而皮质折叠模式仍知之甚少。在本研究中，我们应用基于表面的局部脑回指数（LGI），从高分辨率MRI数据中量化25例ALS患者与25例健康对照的匹配样本中的皮质折叠情况。利用静息态功能磁共振成像数据，我们进一步进行了基于种子点的功能连接分析，以探索皮质折叠变化的功能相关性。我们发现，ALS患者右侧枕叶皮质的LGI显著降低，且该区域的异常与双侧楔前叶功能连接的降低有关。这一系列发现推测是由ALS患者白质连接紊乱所致。在患者组中，我们发现病程与左侧额上回一个簇的LGI之间存在显著负相关，这可能反映了ALS患者的认知功能恶化。总之，我们的结果表明，LGI可能为评估ALS相关神经退行性变及研究ALS的病理生理学提供一种有用的方法。
